“Lights! Camera! Action!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Let me guess. You decided to branch out. Go Hollywood.”
Bastarache’s hands were resting on the table, fingers interlaced like short, fat sausages. At Ryan’s question, the sausages tightened.
“Bare tit on a pole. That’s pretty low-rent action.”
Bastarache glowered mutely.
“Motion pictures. That’s the big time.”
“You’re goddamn crazy.”
“Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, you got a kid eager to earn a few bucks. You propose a little poontang on camera. She goes along.”
“What?”
“Am I going too fast for you, Dave?”
“What are we talking about here?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“Porn flicks?”
“Of a very special genre.”
“You lost me, pal.”
Ryan’s voice turned glacial. “I’m talking kiddie porn, Dave. Children.”
Bastarache disengaged his hands and slapped them down on the table. “I. Don’t. Mess. With. Kids.”
The guard poked his head into the room. “We good here?”
“Jim dandy,” Ryan said.
While Bastarache locked glares with Ryan, I observed him covertly. The rolls in his neck and stomach looked hard and his arms were corded with muscle. The guy wasn’t the lardo I’d first taken him for.
Never breaking eye contact with Bastarache, Ryan reached into a pocket and withdrew one of several stills I’d printed from the video in Cormier’s
Bastarache looked down at the girl on the bench. I watched his body language. Saw no tensing.
“You check this little girl’s ID?” Ryan asked.
“I never laid eyes on her.”
“What’s her name?”
“I told you.” The piggy eyes rolled up. “I never met the young lady.”
“You know a photographer named Stanislas Cormier?”
“Sorry.” Bastarache started running a thumbnail through a scratch on the tabletop.
Ryan pointed at the print. “Got this from Cormier’s computer. Part of a nasty little video. Drive holds quite a collection.”
“The world’s full of degenerates.”
“That your house?”
The thumbnail froze. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Nice landscaping.”
Bastarache squinted at the print, then flicked it toward Ryan with one meaty finger.
“What if it is? I was barely out of high school when this kid was playing Indian princess.”
A tiny bell pinged in my head. What was wrong there? I set it aside until later.
One by one, Ryan laid out the photos of Phoebe Quincy, Kelly Sicard, Claudine Cloquet, and the facial reconstruction of the girl from the Riviere des Mille Iles. Bastarache barely glanced at the faces.
“Sorry, pal. Wish I could help you.”
Ryan added autopsy shots of the Lac des Deux Montagnes floater and the girl from the Dorval shoreline.
“Jesus friggin’ Christ.” Bastarache blinked, but didn’t look away.
Ryan tapped the photos of Quincy and Sicard. “These girls also appear in Cormier’s collection.” Not exactly true for Quincy, but close enough. “They have now vanished. I want to know why.”
“I’ll say it one more time. I don’t know shit about porn flicks or missing kids.”
Bastarache glanced up at the ceiling. Seeking composure? Clever answers? When his face came down it was devoid of expression.
“You employ a pair of cretins named Babin and Mulally?” Ryan pulled another topical switch.
